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MYSTERY OBJECT FOUND IN SUPERNOVA’S HEART(After an item in the YAHOO Science News)

At first glance, the object looked like the cold
densely packed stellar corpse one expects
to see inside a bimillenial supernova.
But the X-rays revealed an unprecedented enigma:
this object is far older than the heart it inhabits.

Tonight, under winter skies,
I tally all the things that have yet to come,
against the hard count of things gone,
doggedly tilting toward balance,
and thanking the stars their indulgence.

And it seems that I’ve always had the time
to become a substance older than myself.

We chose you that day. On an arched
bridge we played our game, selecting
our steps, gliding like ballerinas
this way and that, eluding
the animal waste and other
realities that littered our path.

You can always return to that day,
to the serpentine Tobol currents
rushing under and away, hustling
to an unseen room where you were born.
Return to skies blackening with the smoke
of a thousand blazing heaps of remnant crops,
and the mocking arcs of a million fleeing magpies.
Return to those razored horizons, the distant stands
of white birches, gone gold with autumn,
upright in the distance like candles,
beckoning with the lure of such things
that burn without being consumed.
And, beyond the trees─the persistent steppes,
invisible except for the unearthly
chill of their delivered winds.

How those winds marked us that day
for no more and no less than we were─
humans playing god on a bridge.

You can always return to that day,
but know that we trembled as we played.
Not because there is no such god
but because there is no such game.